Wright death sentence overturned – 5/21/14 News Journal article by Sean O’Sullivan.
“Wright is not entitled to a perfect trial, but he is entitled to a fair one,” wrote Justice Henry duPont Ridgely for the full court, noting that the state improperly withheld evidence. While each item withheld was comparatively minor, the cumulative effect “creates the reasonable probability that the verdict would have been different … [had] the evidence been disclosed.”
Delaware State Rep. Darryl Scott, House sponsor of SB19 to repeal Delaware’s death penalty, responds to the Delaware Supreme Court’s reversal of Jermaine Wright’s conviction and death sentence.
I issued the following statement today in response to Monday’s decision by the Delaware Supreme Court to reverse the murder conviction and death sentence of Jermaine M. Wright.
This decision from the Delaware Supreme Court highlights an important flaw in our criminal justice system, one even the best systems possess: No criminal justice system is perfect. No criminal justice system is infallible. It is possible, even in cases that receive as much scrutiny and have the highest burden of proof, that mistakes can be made.
We must remember that justice does not only mean convicting those who are guilty, but also acquitting the innocent and ensuring that all receive a fair trial. If we cannot guarantee that, how can we take a person’s life?
Since we introduced Senate Bill 19 last year, opponents have said that we do not need to repeal the death penalty in Delaware in part because we do not have the problems other states have had and we haven’t exonerated a man sentenced to death row like Maryland. Now we have evidence that a Delaware jury convicted and a judge sentenced Jermaine Wright to death in a case where the prosecution withheld evidence that would have had a material impact on the outcome of the trial. Had the Supreme Court not reversed Wright’s conviction, Delaware might very well have sent a man unfairly convicted to his death.
When do we as a society have enough evidence that this is an inherently flawed system? When we actually execute an innocent person? Smart government is legislating to prevent tragedies like this, not waiting for one to happen and then passing a law to fix it. We have an opportunity to prevent this type of error from ever occurring again by bringing SB 19 to the House floor for a vote to repeal the death penalty.
Don’t allow feelings to cloud judgment about death penalty – click on this link to access the online letter and its comments
5/21/14 News Journal Letter to the Editor by Kristin Froehlich, sister of a murder victim and Board President of Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty
In response to his editorial “Should Delaware Still Have the Death Penalty?” John Sweeney asks us to debate some hard questions about the death penalty. I welcome a forthright discussion. However, I warn against getting mired in how we “feel.” Feelings are what have kept us from addressing the realities of Delaware’s death penalty as it is practiced. Feelings are what keep the death penalty on the books when Delaware has the 8th highest murder rate in the country. Feelings are what keep legislators from discussing the systemic bias in Delaware’s death penalty. Feelings are what blind us to Delaware’s death penalty failure rate (more than 1/3 of death sentences are reduced to life without parole.) Feelings are what prevent the true financial costs of the death penalty in Delaware from being disclosed. Feelings are what promote the death penalty as “the” answer for victims’ families when the vast majority of families will never have access to it. Feelings are what keep law enforcement and corrections leadership staunchly supporting the death penalty while they go begging for personnel, raises, and resources. Feelings are what keep Senate Bill 19 stuck in the House Judiciary Committee instead of allowing the facts to be debated before the full House. I “feel” disgusted that this barbaric practice remains common in Delaware, but I know my feeling is not relevant to people who disagree with me or to decision-makers. Let’s take up John Sweeney’s challenge and discuss the hard questions.
Join us as we discuss our next steps after the recent reversal of Jermaine Wright’s conviction and death sentence. We will have our usual monthly DCODP meeting, Monday 5/26/14 at 5:30 pm. Yes, it really is scheduled on Memorial Day. LOCATION: Wilmington Friends Meeting House, 1st floor Social Room, 401 N. West St, Wilmington, DE 19801. Park in the parking lot on the 5th Street side or on the street. Ring the doorbell at the West Street entrance. Call 302-379-0488 for info. All are welcome!
Delaware murder conviction and death sentence overturned
Breaking news: Delaware may join the 26 other states with wrongful death penalty convictions. Originally sentenced in 1992, Jermaine Wright’s conviction and death sentence were overturned today by the Delaware Supreme Court due to prosecutorial misconduct. The A.G.s office is assessing whether to retry the case.
Thank you to Connie Jones and Joanne Cabry for raising their voices asking for fair and appropriate behavior on the part of our legislators and courts:
On Fri, Apr 25, 2014, Connie Jones’ letter was published in the Coastal Point:
Editor:
It’s time to let the House of Representatives vote on repealing the death penalty.
Senate Bill 19 calls for the repeal of the death penalty. After passing the Senate, the bill was placed in the House Judiciary Committee in March 2013, and there it remains because there are not sufficient committee members willing to vote to release it. The vote was 6 to 5, according to one representative.
I believe committee members who voted against releasing SB 19 should explain why they are blocking their fellow representatives from voting on this very important bill. Perhaps they could also explain why the criteria for releasing a bill are different in the House and the Senate? In March 2013, the Senate Executive Committee determined it was ready and appropriate to release the bill to the full Senate for a vote. Yet the House committee has had the bill tabled for over a year.
A representative has the right to vote against repeal of the death penalty, but the place to cast that vote is on the House floor, not in a committee hearing.
Connie Jones
Lewes
On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 10:23 PM, Joanne Cabry <jcabry@gmail.com> wrote:
Delaware State News 04/25/2014, Page A06
Justice for all — who can afford it
Two recent news stories have strengthened my conviction that we must repeal capital punishment in Delaware.
In January, prosecutors opened a sealed envelope from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Wilmington during a drug-prosecution case in Kent County and discovered Oxycontin pills had been replaced with blood-pressure medicine. [“Police probe drug evidence tampering,” article, Feb. 22, and subsequent articles.] Since then, over 60 cases of tainted evidence have been discovered, and there are thousands of drug samples from 2010 to the present yet to be tested.
I have heard over and over again that we don’t execute innocent people in Delaware. How can anyone say that with certainty – especially in light of the ongoing investigation of massive contamination of evidence in the Medical Examiner’s office? Judges and prosecutors are humans, subject to the same human frailties we all possess. We all make mistakes.
I have also heard the argument that we have a legal system that protects the defendant. Sadly, I think the reality is we have a legal system that protects the defendants who can afford to pay for their own defense.
In June 2008, a state prosecutor offered Robert Richards IV a plea to a single count of fourth- degree rape of his 3-year- old daughter, which carries no mandatory time. Richards accepted, admitting in court that he abused his child. Superior Court Judge Jan Jurden, at the recommendation of the prosecution, suspended an eight-year prison sentence and sentenced Richards to a treatment program for sex offenders. [“Legal brethren back judge in du Pont heir sentencing,” article, April 9] Richards’ attorney commented, “It was more than reasonable, an enlightened plea offer.” As a multimillionaire, Richards could afford to hire a private attorney to defend him. Even though I disagree with the decision of Judge Jan Jurden, who has been described as “an outstanding jurist” by Delaware’s attorney general and a number of lawyers and their professional organizations, I acknowledge Robert Richards’ right to use his financial resources to engage a lawyer or legal team to get him the best deal possible.
But the vast majority of capital defendants don’t have Robert Richards’ money. An article in the National Law Journal concluded that capital trials are “more like a random flip of the coin than a delicate balancing of scales,” because the defense attorney is “too often … ill-trained, unprepared [and] grossly underpaid.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has observed that “People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty … I have yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve- of- execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial.”
Study after study has shown that whether or not a defendant will be sentenced to death depends more on the quality of his legal team than any other factor.
Until we can change the sad reality that a person’s wealth determines the quality of his or her defense, and until we can say humans never make mistakes, the state has no right to execute a human being.
Joanne Cabry
Chair, Progressive Democrats of Sussex County Rehoboth Beach
Senate Bill 19 can still pass this year! Join in the effort at our monthly DCODP meeting, Monday 4/28/14 at 5:30 pm. LOCATION: Wilmington Friends Meeting House, 1st floor Social Room, 401 N. West St, Wilmington, DE 19801. Park in the parking lot on the 5th Street side or on the street. Ring the doorbell at the West Street entrance. Call 302-379-0488 for info. All are welcome!
Certificate: Sussex prison death a homicide 4/21/14 “The February death of a man being held at the Sussex Correctional Institution has been ruled a homicide due to multiple blunt force injuries, according to a death certificate provided an attorney representing the man’s family.”
Six experts debate the death penalty in today’s issue of the New York Times. The fact that the death penalty has reached this level of civil, open, public conversation gives me great hope for the future.
What It Means If the Death Penalty is Dying, NYT, 4/7/14
Tonight’s episode of the series questioning how some people ended up on death row was about a man named John Thompson who was convicted of murder in 1985. The treatment of his connection to the murder of a young man was a little on the thin side. That’s not the point. The problem examined, once again, was government misconduct. In this case, Thompson was convicted of two crimes, one involving a car-jacking with people in the car and the other a murder. It was important to the prosecution case to go to trial first on the car-jacking and get a conviction because that conviction could then be used against Thompson in the murder trial, to show that he had a record. The conviction effectively prevented Thompson from taking the witness stand in his own behalf because the conviction could be used against him. As I remember the description of Thompson, he did not have a record otherwise.
There was evidence collected at the scene of the car-jacking indicating that the person responsible was injured and his blood ended up on the clothing of the victims. The clothing disappeared and the blood test performed on it was not revealed to the defense. When this aspect of the case was investigated years later, it turned out that the presumed criminal had a different blood type from Thompson. If the police theory is correct that the blood on the victim’s clothing was that of the car jacker, this would exonerate Thompson. The government’s explanation of its treatment of evidence is not credible, leaving one to infer that it was not in the prosecution’s interest to tell the defense it had good reason to believe Thompson was innocent. Of course, this is not what was said, but that is, I suggest, a reasonable interpretation of the evidence set forth in the show. There was also a question of the reliability of eyewitness testimony.
The murder case was built upon the car jacking case, so its foundation was shaky at best. It turns out that the star witness was paid $10,000 to testify against Thompson. There was a reduced sentence deal in this trial also. None of this was revealed until Thompson had been in jail for many years. Eventually, the convictions were vacated and after some indecision on the part of the prosecution, Thompson had a new trial on the murder charge and was not convicted. Because he was, for all intents and purposes framed by the government, as presented in this show, he sued the authorities involved and received a judgement of $14,000,000. This was appealed and reversed in a decision by the United States Supreme Court. The 5-4 decision was written by Justice Thomas.
What I’ve said up to now raises many questions. Here are a few that jump out.
Who has $10,000 to buy a witness’s testimony? We’re all familiar with plea deals, but who has that kind of money to give someone? That is, where did it come from? If the government itself, where does the paper trail lead and why were we not told that someone has been prosecuted? I assume we were not told about a prosecution because no one was prosecuted. Surely, this is not a legitimate governmental use of public money, so what about a prosecution of any government officials involved in this transfer of funds? If it was private money, wouldn’t that qualify as corruption, obstruction of justice, if you will? Suborning perjury? Maybe misprision of a felony (perjury)? Again, where’s the prosecution? Surely, even in Louisiana this must be wrong, mustn’t it?
Also, supposedly one of the goals of any justice system is to punish those who commit crimes, especially violent crimes with victims. Does anyone care that an innocent person was convicted and lost many years of his life in a jail cell instead of being with his family, and the person who committed the crime was free to commit more crimes if he chose? The law enforcement personnel in these shows never seem to care about these things, and I don’t have the impression (I may be wrong) that the show is trying to paint them in a bad light in these instances.
Next, why should we respect the rulings of the United States Supreme Court? That’s not a rhetorical question. Brady v. Maryland was decided in 1963. The murder case under discussion was tried in1985. That’s over two decades when lawyers are supposed to know that exculpatory or potentially exculpatory evidence has to be revealed to the defense. Put aside for the moment the payment of money to suborn perjury and just look at the Brady material. Maybe there is an important decision to be made at times as to whether evidence is exculpatory. I don’t think that was the case here or in some of the other shows we have seen in this series. No one gives a damn about complying with the ruling in Brady, apparently, and it seems as though we hear next to nothing about this attitude. Why should ordinary members of the public respect the rulings of the United States Supreme Court when it is obvious that there are law enforcement personnel, some of them lawyers, who must not respect the rulings because they do not obey them.
There is a part of this evening’s show that strikes me as poorly handled or perhaps just disingenuous. Prosecutors were asked about the guidance they received in the office for situations such as those involving Brady material. They said that there was no intention to share anything more than could not be avoided and handbooks were incorrect in setting forth standards. Well, so what? Handbooks are there for the use of those who need guidance in such matters. We are talking about lawyers, I assume members of the Bar in Louisiana, who ought to know what the Supreme Court has said about the conduct of the cases they handle. It is pathetic to hear Harry Connick, Sr. say that he hasn’t opened a law book since law school. That by itself probably tells you everything you need to know about the justice system in New Orleans if not all of Louisiana. What about the younger prosecutors who came into the office as the years passed? Should we really believe they knew nothing of something covered in basic criminal procedure courses in law school? For that matter, if I remember correctly, Connick was the DA from about 1972 to 2003, so it is not clear from this information when he was graduated from law school (or where he went to school, not that the school should make a difference as long as it was an ABA accredited school), but is it too much to ask that he be familiar with a critical element of law enforcement that had been the law of the land for about 10 years when he became DA? In other words, it sounds like he was never worthy of the job from the time he took office until he left. That statement is based on his words, and is not merely a personal opinion on my part.
A well-known retired Superior Court judge in Delaware told the lawyers in a case he was hearing before his retirement that he kept up with changes in the law by reading Readers Digest. I was told that by one of the lawyers in the pretrial conference who heard him say it. I do not practice criminal law, but I have been a faithful watcher of Law & Order for many years.
You see, there really are ways to find out about developments in the law that took place in the ancient days of 1963.
Aside from an innocent person or someone wrongfully convicted going free occasionally, is there ever any reason to pay attention to Brady? For most of us, that is a rhetorical question and the answer is that we have a personal code of ethics that demands we try to do our jobs properly. By now, we all know of too many instances when Brady material is not made available to the defense, and so we must conclude that there are prosecutors who do not intend to obey the law. How can we respect the law when we know there are people entrusted with its enforcement who do not obey the law? To be vulgar about it, is there ever an episode of the new Hawaii 50 where the perp should not go free because of egregious police misconduct in handling the case?
Something I wonder about a lot is the Wong Sun doctrine. This is sometimes referred to on tv shows as the “fruit of the poisoned tree” doctrine. Briefly, if you break the law to gain evidence and this results in finding evidence of criminal conduct on the part of the person being investigated, it cannot be used against that person because of the way the evidence was obtained. It makes sense and it seems right, but does anyone really abide by it?
Step back from these situations and look at the big picture. There are a lot, a very large number, of police officers and prosecutors who are dedicated to doing their jobs lawfully and well, and they deserve the respect and gratitude of all citizens. The people in law enforcement who do not obey the law stand out from the others because their behavior is so unacceptable and offensive. I really do not believe they are in the majority. The problem is, how are we to know who is a bad apple? Eventually, it will come out, but knowing that it may take a long time, perhaps years or even decades, how can we afford to have a death penalty that may lead to the executions of innocent people? It’s bad enough that an innocent person may spend years in jail, but there can be release and perhaps even a monetary reward that will never make amends. You can’t say that with the death penalty.
The 5-4 decision to prevent Thompson from receiving compensation for his years in jail may be rightly decided. I haven’t had a chance to read it and so I don’t have an opinion. As presented in this show, it is unsupportable. My own bias may come into play here. I’ve never had a good opinion of the author. As you may recall, when Justice O’Connor was still on the Court he took a position that there was nothing wrong with prison guards beating up prisoners. Justice O’Connor and others wrote that this behavior could be described as “cruel and unusual punishment.” There’s no way we can get more information out of one of the people responsible for putting him on the Court, the one who advocated the single bullet theory unless he left diaries or letters that have yet to see the light of day. There is, of course, someone still alive who had a role in this appointment, but how can you know what to believe when he talks about his career? That’s rhetorical, too.
Perhaps the big lesson we can take from the cases aired on this show is that government misconduct that can lead to the imprisonment or even deaths of persons charged with crimes they did not commit is not restricted to one geographic area. It does, however, appear to happen a lot to those unable to afford a good defense. Thompson, tonight, did not even know his own blood type, which strikes me as evidence of socioeconomic disadvantage during most or all of his life. Would someone differently situated have ended up on death row? That’s a fair question and I’m not sure there is a really good answer, although I suspect the correct answer is “no”. Is there any wonder that many people distrust law enforcement? That is not healthy for any segment of society.
This show is now on hiatus, returning in the summer with new episodes. It will be interesting to see if it continues to present thought provoking stories.
Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty 